Consumers expect more personalization across every retail touch point, including email. While customer acquisition via email has quadrupled over the past four years, according to research from Custora, generic email programs now have reduced impact on acquisition growth.
At Moxie Jean, an upscale, online-only children’s consignment store, a personalized email strategy has helped the start-up increase sales by 500% since the beginning of 2013. By replacing non-tailored recommendations with a customized email approach, the eTailer generates “more than $65 in sales for every $1 spent on our targeted email strategies,” said Sharon Schneider, Co-Owner of Moxie Jean, in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “We have also increased our email open rate by 16% and our conversion rate from opens by 18%. Customized, cost-effective emails are helping us create sticky customer relationships.”
Advertisement
Previously, Moxie Jean emailed the same product recommendations to all mothers, regardless of children’s ages. Schneider realized that the lack of personalization potentially created some missed sales opportunities, and turned to SimpleRelevance for assistance.
“SimpleRelevance leverages the huge amount of information available on the Internet about shoppers’ browsing and purchasing habits to predict which online products shoppers are likely to buy,” explained Schneider. “In our case ― an online marketplace for gently used, high quality kids’ clothes ― most important to us is which size and gender of clothing you bought from us in the past. If you purchased for a 3T girl, there’s no sense in us showing you items for size 5 boys. Now we can customize emails by purchase history, which in turn increases email conversions.”
Moxie Jean sends out “thousands and thousands of emails,” said Schneider, “because email is still the No. 1 purchase driver for e-Commerce. But you have to have a smart, cost-effective strategy.”
SimpleRelevance integrates with the Moxie Jean API to offer personalized product recommendations on an individual basis. The upgraded approach enables Moxie Jean to fulfill a growing customer expectation that the eTailer’s communications will be relevant, personal and customized.
Twice a week the consignment store uploads a large batch of inventory data that includes about 1,000 unique items. Once the data is uploaded, a new inventory alert is sent to everyone on the Moxie Jean email subscriber list. Approximately 70 subscribers are added every day. “The inventory alerts pull customers back to see what’s new and to shop again,” Schneider said. Emails also offer information about clothing that is one size larger than children’s current sizes, to address the child’s expected growth. “Each personalized email we send now results in higher revenue.”
Solution Scales With eTailer’s Growth
By using a third-party provider, “I didn’t have to build the system myself, and don’t have to maintain it,” stated Schneider, “which is ideal, since my staff has no formal technical training. Now I get access to a team of programmers working on critical marketing functionality at a tiny fraction of the cost of hiring my own developers. And, the platform quickly scales with me during high-demand seasons like the holidays, and for rapid growth throughout the year.”
In addition, the customized emails can be distributed any day of the week. “Our studio was closed on Thanksgiving and the day after,” noted Schneider, “but the emails went out as scheduled because the SimpleRelevance technology did all the work.”
Since Schneider is not a technologist, email program outsourcing “lets me focus on the things that make the biggest difference in my success, such as customer relationships, reputation, merchandising and creating beautiful product offerings,” stated Schneider. “That’s why people get into this industry ― not because they want to build email marketing programs, but because they have certain retail skill sets and want to focus on what they do best.”
